


Cold As Ice

by vixalicious



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-05
Updated: 2007-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-07 19:53:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vixalicious/pseuds/vixalicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for a contest, with the theme of ice.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Cold As Ice

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a contest, with the theme of ice.

She drives down the highway, staring as the sun bounces off the flecks in the asphalt, making them glisten like diamonds. There's heat rising off the road, rising off the engine, and the AC in her old station wagon has seen too many summers to fight them both off, leaving the car lukewarm and smelling of melted chocolate and stale children.

There's her oldest, Samantha, stewing in the passenger side of the front seat, headphones glued to her ears, playing her role of sullen teenager to perfection. And the twins, Tom and Trey, kicking and fighting in the backseat, trading shouts of 'Get off me!' and 'Stop touching me!' Her fourth child, also a boy but as of yet unborn - and please God, let it stay that way, that's the last thing this road trip from hell needs - kicks hard inside her, obviously wanting to join his brothers in the scuffle, even if he has to go through her kidneys to do it. She reaches up, gathering the sweat from underneath her hair and wiping it on the leg of her jeans. She's hot and she's tired and she just doesn't have the strength to offer more than a half-hearted, "Boys, cut that out now."

The boys thump against the front seat, and Samantha sighs, her eyes rolling in a snotty indictment of her brothers' lack of couth and her mother's lack of disciplinary skills, the way only a thirteen-year-old can do. The children have been cooped up, trapped in a four-by-nine metal cage, for as long as they - and she - can stand. A road sign promises respite, along with clean restrooms, so she flips on the turn signal and switches lanes. 

She pulls to a stop in front of the pump. The boys are out and running before the car's in park; her daughter moves slower, making her exit from the vehicle a class-A protest demonstration. She gives herself a moment alone, an opportunity to slump against the steering wheel and close her eyes for a moment, letting the heat and the fatigue take over. It doesn't last, it can't last, she can't let it, so after a minute, she stirs, leveraging herself carefully out of the driver's seat, smoothing her hands down her wrinkled shorts, pulling her sleeveless maternity frock free where it's stuck to her back. 

She crosses the parking lot, headed for the store. The boys are running in circles around a septic tank, feet knocking up a cloud of dust. She pushes the glass door to the convenience store, bell tinkling overhead. An icy wall of air-conditioning greets her, an over-compensation from the heat outside. She nods a greeting at the man behind the counter, looking around for Samantha with all the intensity of a mother hen with a chick out of place, breathing a deep sigh of relief as she spots her daughter sitting cross-legged at the back of the store, nose stuck in the newest edition of her favorite teen magazine. 

She walks to the cooler, grabbing a bottle of water for herself and fruit juice for the kids, then gets a cup of ice from the soda fountain. The frigid air makes the sweat clammy on her skin as she moves slowly to the checkout, feeling like her swollen stomach is moving a mile ahead of her. 

The man at the counter is all grease: oily hair, shiny skin, smarmy smile. His eyes take a quick, insulting trip down her form, and she tries to ignore the creepy feeling it gives her as she pays for the drinks.

"Looks like you got your hands full there, little lady," And his voice has a sly innuendo that suggests that he'd be willing to give her something else to fill them with.

"I manage." Her tone is icy, clipped, as she gathers her purchases, eyes averted to the cracked counter and the dirty, stained linoleum below. Whatever expression is in his eyes, she doesn't want to know. She turns, calling for her daughter. "Samantha. Time to go."

She stalks out, with as much dignity as an eight-months-pregnant woman can muster. The hot, dry air overwhelms her, and she tells herself that's the cause of the nausea twisting her insides, that it's the dust swirling in the air that's making her feel unclean. But she pushes it down, locks it all away, because right now, sick is not an option. 

Walking to the car, she tosses the bottles into the front seat through the open window. The cup of ice she sets on the roof, fishing a small piece out to suck on. Gassing up is a rote routine after two days on the road, and she doesn't even register the motions she's going through. She does note the shaking of the car as Samantha slams the door, shutting herself in, treasured magazine clutched in hand. Idly, she wonders where the girl got the money to buy it. For a brief moment, she lets herself hope her daughter stole it, because that would serve that fucking creep right.

She picks out another chunk of ice, runs the cube over the nape of her neck, then down one arm as the melted water slides down her skin. She'd give just about anything right now to be cool, to be calm, to feel normal again. But that's not likely to happen anytime soon. She sighs, as the gas pump clicks and the nozzle jumps under her hand. She flips the pump off, and rests her head on the heated metal roof of the wagon, staring into the window in the back at a plain cardboard box. All the important things are piled into that hatch, the bits of their lives she couldn't trust to the movers. Especially not that box. There's a folded up flag on the top of that box, and even though it's closed away under multiple layers of tape, she can see it there as clear as day. Folded crisply, white stars stark against a blue background, it serves as a stiff, starched reminder of every thing she can't let herself think about if she's going to make it through this trip without cracking. She has to keep it together, so she straightens her spine, steels her resolve. With a quick shout, she rounds the boys up, halting their game of hide and seek around the ice machine and the tire service station, time to go.

Back on the road, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, they've all faded into one long stretch of dusty desert and blurring white lines, endless hours of alphabet games and are we there yets. It's a relief when the sun sets and dinner's a memory. The traffic thins, and the kids fall asleep in a pile of blankets and pillows. The road becomes a sea of headlights, truckers making the long haul. She rolls her window down, letting the air rush in and keep her awake, aware, but the blacktop holds the heat from the day and the wind blows hot. She keeps driving, not because she can't afford a hotel or because she isn't tired, but because she knows she won't sleep, and the hours are better spent in motion. 

At least, she's hoping they are. She's hoping this better than the way she spent the previous night: staring sleeplessly at the ceiling of a budget motel, listening to the asthmatic whirring of the window unit, trying to keep the thoughts at bay, the memories locked away, the future frozen in time. 

It's hard to keep it that way, though, even if she doesn't let herself stop to think. At the diner where they ate dinner, a young couple held hands, unable to stop making eyes at each other. How can she see them without remembering Mitch, how in love they were back then, making out on the Ferris wheel at the pier, back when they were young enough and stupid enough to think that the biggest battle they would ever face would be their parents grounding them for missing their curfew.

Bleary-eyed, she crosses the California state line. The air grows gradually cooler as she leaves the desert behind. She drives across a bridge, and she knows if he was here, he'd be telling her how it was built, all child-like glee and endless fascination with load-bearing and weight distribution and dozens of other concepts that she never understood, no matter how many times he patiently explained them. A tear slides slowly down her cheek, and she wipes it away quickly.

And how is she supposed to look at Samantha, look at Mitch's eyes and his stubborn chin? Watch their boys, with their pranks and their fighting, and know when to steer them away from trouble or let boys be boys? And how is she supposed to tell this baby about his father - how will he ever understand how kind, how intelligent, how absolutely infuriating the man was, how big his heart?

She's on the city streets now, familiar streets. This is where they met, where they fell in love. This was their beginning. And it's too soon, far too soon for this to be their end. They were supposed to grow old together, save their money, and retire. They were supposed to get to travel, to find the time for all the things they'd put off for another day. She bats a hand blindly around the console, searching for a napkin, because once a dam opens there's no stopping the flood.

Daylight is breaking, pale and cool, and her parents' house is just there. She can do this, she can make it. Sucking in a shaky, hiccupped breath, she pulls the car into the drive, memory and luck guiding her, tears streaming down her face as she puts the car in park. 

She's out of the car, and she's on her knees in the cool grass, painful soundless sobs wracking her frame as her mother holds her, as she whispers over and over again. "It wasn't supposed to be this way."

Samantha's half out of the car, staring at her mother in shock, and two sleepy faces are pressed against the glass in the back seat. Their struggle to gain her attention is lost, forgotten in the face of their mother's grief, the raw emotion that's spilling out of her on the lawn of their grandparents' home under the now-rosy glow of the morning sun. And nothing's fixed, the world isn't suddenly righted again - but at least it's started to thaw.


End file.
